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Oculus Rift and HTC Vive buyers face shipping headaches
The future of VR has been put on hold, apparently.
Your gleaming vision of a virtual reality future may have to wait a while. Both Oculus Rift and HTC Vive buyers are facing delays and other headaches that are preventing them from getting their VR headsets as quickly as expected. In the case of the Rift, Oculus is telling pre-order customers that there was an "unexpected component shortage" that's pushing back delivery. The company is promising free shipping to these early adopters as compensation, but they won't get updated shipping statuses until April 12th -- not fun if you were previously poised to get one within days.
Would-be Vive owners, meanwhile, report that their credit cards were declined and didn't get subsequent attempts. The hiccup led to some buyers either losing their orders or being bumped back in the queue, which is bound to trigger a heart attack if you rushed to spend $799. HTC pins the problem on "processing issues" at banks and is aiming to resume orders in the right order, but it doesn't have a solid time frame for when everything will be fixed. Look at it this way, though: if you're a Vive buyer, you can at least take comfort in knowing that your Oculus Rift brethren aren't faring much better.
